The present invention relates to a method of arranging a bird having a body and two legs in a position for being suspended from a shackle, the body having a breast and a back and each leg comprising a breast side, a back side, a thigh connected to the body at a hip joint, a drumstick connected to the thigh, a shank connected to the drumstick at a hock joint and a foot with digits, where the body of the bird is placed on a support surface with the breast side facing the support surface. The invention also relates to an apparatus for arranging a bird in a position for being suspended from a shackle.
In most bird slaughterhouses, particularly poultry slaughterhouses, the birds to be slaughtered are suspended from slaughter shackles on an overhead conveyor before being killed and plucked. Suspending the birds manually is a heavy and monotonous work and it is therefore desired to provide a reliable automation of the process. In order to achieve this, the birds must be arranged in a position for being suspended.
DE3048342A1 described a method where each bird is arranged in an individual tray with the legs projecting over the tray edge before being brought into engagement with the shackle. This method and the tray system used is structurally very simple, but suffers from the disadvantage that the bird tends to roll over to one side due to the curvature of the breast and that the shackle may then not catch the bird correctly.
In WO 00/18245 each bird is instead arranged on a so-called fit piece, which matches the shape of the breast or back side of the bird. In modern poultry slaughterhouses running at very high processing speeds it is, however, not possible for the operators arranging the birds on the fit pieces to position all birds optimally and some birds are therefore not caught correctly by the shackles.
In WO 2011/116774 the legs of each bird are arranged with the shanks locked in retainer clips in order to provide a precise positioning of the bird, but this still requires a manual handling of the birds and in some cases the bird is held too tightly to be released properly from the clips.
A fully automated positioning of birds is known from the applicant's prior patent application PCT/DK2013/050294, where each bird is arranged in a concave holder, which is then rotated until the legs of the bird are in the correct position for being transferred to the shackle. This method is highly reliable and efficient, but due to its technical complexity also relatively expensive.